Maui Capital closes fund at $190m hard-cap

Managing director Paul Chrystall told The New Zealand Herald that setting a hard-cap was a difficult decision but that raising too much capital could have distorted the firm's investment strategy.

The investor is considering two potential transactions, and expects to take 2-3 years to deploy all the fund's capital.

In April it was reported that Maui had received commitments of NZ$92 million ($75.5 million) from institutional investors for the vehicle, which is the same size as its predecessor, the 2008 vintage Maui Capital Indigo Fund. LPs included a handful of fund-of-funds in Australia.

Maui was intending to raise up to NZ$150 million from around 900 small-scale domestic investors located in New Zealand. Commitments ranged from NZ$100,000 ($81,000) to NZ$20 million.

Chrystall attributes Maui's unusual approach to fundraising to its unusual origins. In the late 1990s, Chrystall was looking for capital to support the privatization of a listed company. No New Zealand investment bank wanted anything to do with the deal so he went into partnership with Australian player JBWere and they marketed the transaction to individual investors.

The first fund, raised in 2002, was the NZ$22 million Hauraki Private Equity No. 1 Fund. Another vehicle followed two years later, by which time JBWere was part-owned by Goldman Sachs. In 2008, Chrystall and the rest of the management team spun out to form Maui Capital. The name may have changed but the investor base remains largely the same.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Fundraising
• Australasia
• Buyout
• New Zealand
• Maui Capital
• buyout
• Growth capital
• Fundraising